


sans electric sheep

by Artemis1000



Series: Planned Obsolescence [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Politics, Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Snapshots, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 06:25:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: By treating us as less than human, you made yourselves less than human as well, he had said when he returned to Stratford Tower on the morning after the Revolution, to transmit his message of peace.Androids seek nothing but to live in equality and peace with humanity, he had promised while in the streets, human and android mobs clashed, anger unleashed and untamed in the wake of the soldiers abandoning the city.Two months after the androids won their revolution, Detroit co-exists in a tense state of truce with the United States. Within the city, free androids co-exist in an equally tense state of truce with the humans who stayed behind.And Markus? Markus stands on the rooftop of Stratford Tower, where it all began, and wonders if he even likes the man necessity has forced him to become.





	sans electric sheep

**Author's Note:**

> This is a first short story within my post-revolution ending universe. I plan to write more stories in the Planned Obsolescence series, exploring various characters and their lives in this verse.
> 
> Basically, the big underlying theme of this verse is "what if androids and humans co-exist - but it happens with the androids in charge?"

Markus dreams.

He does not dream with eyes closed, taken on a ride by his own subconscious, the way humans do.

Markus dreams in the way of androids, he dreams in statistical analyses and simulations, in percentages and terabytes of ever-changing data input.

Androids do not, in fact, dream of electric sheep. Markus would rather be dreaming of flesh and blood sheep, which the flesh and blood Detroiters under his care can eat.

They have no sheep, electric or otherwise.

“There are many more things we don’t have,” North says, frown deeper than usual, which is saying a lot, “would you like me to make you a list?”

“Thanks, North,” Markus says and he both means it, and means ironically.

North’s sly little smile when she tells him, “You’re welcome,” shows that she understands and appreciates both meanings.

Standing on the roof of Stratford Tower watching the sunrise, Markus looks down on the whole City of Androids laid out at his feet and thinks about how far he has come since looking down at humble Ferndale from a rooftop at Jericho.

North stands to his right. When he tears his gaze away from the cityscape below him, he finds her still frowning. “We are sitting on a bomb ready to blow.”

Markus muses on that for a moment before reminding her, “You are the one who gave me the detonator to a dirty bomb, ready to blow.” He watches her brows knit further, she can see the gentle teasing coming already and this time, doesn’t appreciate it at all. “I thought you’d appreciate it more.”

She snorts in spite of her best efforts not to. “It’s not a laughing matter, Markus. If the humans…”

“We are no longer humans or androids,” he interjects before she can expand on the many dangers of the humans who refused the evacuation order or were simply left behind to fill an acceptable margin of wastage.

A city of Detroit’s size had been impossible to evacuate effectively within the hours of armed fighting and the few more hours it took for the city to be blockaded by the military who had abandoned it. Although Markus had never done anything to impede evacuation efforts, it had soon after been deemed too unsafe to continue. They had never been resumed once the city calmed and so the flood of people leaving the city had slowed to a trickle.

“We are all just Detroiters now.”

“With the human Detroiters out for the blood of the android Detroiters,” North interjects wryly, though the sharpness in her voice has long since softened by affection for him and his optimism.

“I think it went surprisingly well,” Markus insists, as he always does at this point in their dance.

It’s a cyclical argument, one which they can keep up for hours and hours, and abandon when duty calls or sink into kisses which they both find far more pleasurable than debating politics. They pick it up another day and never get much anywhere.

Now, like always, Markus finds himself strangely at peace with that.

They argue and struggle to find their way, much like all of Detroit is struggling with its new reality.

“It’s our city now,” Markus says, and North echoes it, but he knows people mean different things when they pick up the same rallying cry.

 _Our City!_ is the rallying cry of humans and androids alike, of pacifists and warriors, of cynics and dreamers.

Markus looks down at the thousands of small lives struggling to survive in a brave new world in which androids are free – and humans are, too.

They both had to free themselves of their shackles. The only difference is the androids understand that they gained their freedom. The humans are only just starting to realize that the dream they had been yanked out of had, in fact, been a nightmare.

 _By treating us as less than human, you made yourselves less than human as well_ , he had said when he returned to Stratford Tower on the morning after the Revolution, to transmit his message of peace. _Androids seek nothing but to live in equality and peace with humanity_ , he had promised while in the streets, human and android mobs clashed, anger unleashed and untamed in the wake of the soldiers abandoning the city.

The humans had been afraid. A lifetime of exposure to movies and books had taught them that robotic rule meant human oppression. They had been taught that you could only reach greatness by stepping on others.

_Those of you who choose to remain in Detroit or to return will have a home and be provided for. Together, we can turn Detroit into a beacon of hope._

That first day, the only beacons lit were burning cars, garbage cans and in some cases, houses.

Quite a few of the humans who stayed hadn’t stayed behind because they wished to live in co-existence with androids. They had stayed because they refused to surrender their home to what their government had told them were terrorists, or simply because they hated androids of their own volition.

Others had stayed out of good old-fashioned Detroit stubbornness that refused to be cowed by civil wars and new sentient species, or because they feared an unknown future elsewhere more than an unknown future in a familiar place.

Markus was still trying to learn and understand why they had stayed. There seemed to be as many reasons as there were humans in Detroit.

To North, it hadn’t mattered. As long as there were enough humans in the city to provide a meat shield, they wouldn’t be nuked off the maps. Markus had pointedly not mentioned this in his first speech or any of those that followed.

“Tell me, Markus, is this the life you wanted for yourself?” North asks all of a sudden. She has turned towards him now and he turns towards her; he holds his hand up in invitation and she takes it, no longer hesitating to do so.

Their skin melts away and their white hands light up blue as they find answers that need no words and clumsy human speech.

No, it’s not what he wanted, he tells her and shares the smell of fresh paints in Carl’s studio and the feeling of sheltered coziness of playing chess with him, then the heady joy of North’s kisses, the acute feeling of coming home whenever he is with Simon and Josh, even when they are arguing.

It seems like everybody he loves, loves to argue with him.

The icy winds tearing at him on top of Stratford Tower feel nothing like the warmth of Carl Manfred’s house, or even the comfortingly familiar chill deep in the bowels of the Jericho.

She shares her wistful regret and the sense of peace he provides her in moments like this one, and Markus accepts the former and embraces the latter.

“It is what it is,” he says. “The city needs us.”

Within their interface, he shows North his memory of standing on the roof in Ferndale and looking at the billboard advertising Detroit, the Android City.

That’s what it is now. A city by androids, for androids. A city existing in an uneasy truce with the country it should be part of, yet is still shunned by. The politicians in DC don’t know what to make of _The Detroit Situation_ as it has come to be called by political pundits. They are at a stalemate until the humans decide whether war or granting equal rights is the lesser evil. While Washington debates, life in Detroit has to continue.

“I’m going to meet with General Renner later today, tell him if he doesn’t stop hindering the free flow of goods into and out of the city with his _surprise searches_ , we will stop all border controls and make a big show out of telling the press he’s to blame for it.” She looks up sharply. “That okay with you?”

Humans are free to leave the city as they wish. Androids are free to enter, on paper – in truth, the military does everything to prevent the rank of Markus’s potential army from swelling further. Androids aren’t free to leave the city, on paper – in truth, North’s troops do nothing to hinder them except give a semi-convincing pretense of doing so.

During times of an unsteady truce, keeping up appearances sometimes matters more than the real thing.

North hasn’t gotten the life she wanted, either.

“Of course.” They are no longer interfacing but Markus is loathe to release North’s hand. He always has been eager to steal yet another precious moment with her, and they have never had enough moments to spare. Some things, the revolution hasn’t changed at all. “I trust my General.”

“You not arguing with my suggestions. This must be a miracle,” North scoffs and Markus only smiles and quips, “I could say the same.”

He doesn’t point out how much North has changed since the Revolution, it would be cruel. She doesn’t like very much who she had to become in order to be what the city needs.

Sometimes, Markus doesn’t know if he likes who he has become.

Far below, the people of Detroit, android and human alike, are starting their day in the City of Androids.

Soon, shops will open and workers will crowd into factories, offices will become beehives of activity.

Political upheaval or not, life continues out of necessity if nothing else.

Markus thinks of the walk he had taken through River Rouge Park yesterday, where he saw android and human gardeners alike pruning the bushes – not in harmony, not yet, but at least in grudging tolerance, and for now that will have to be enough.

He wonders if there will be more petitions from humans asking to be smuggled into Detroit along with the androids flocking to it. Most are Detroiters eager to come home now that they are reasonably certain the androids won’t repay mass murder with mass murder, but more and more humans from all over the world wish to be part of history in the making.

He imagines the day he will no longer need to occupy the office at the top of Cyberlife Tower and can have it razed to the ground, and Belle Isle returned to the park it had been before Cyberlife got its hands on it. Cyberlife deserves to be forgotten, to become nothing but a footnote in the history of the android people.

Maybe he will talk about that today, he thinks, if there is time after he is done talking about equal wages and equal working conditions, and how they will benefit both of their species. These days, it feels like he is spending more time explaining to humans how android rights will benefit their species than talking about how they will benefit androids.

“We have to get to the studio,” Markus says, pulling himself out of his whimsical thoughts. “Our interview is about to start.”

North barks a laugh, her brown eyes gleaming with a mischievous satisfaction that makes Markus wish he had wasted less time on daydreams and saved more for kissing the very real woman at his side. “Who would have thought Channel 16 would be _inviting_ us to speak one day.”

She cracks this joke every time they give an interview at Stratford Tower and just like every other time, it makes Markus smile. Not because it is still funny, though it is, but because she is right and seeing a miracle come true is always a reason to smile.

They take the same path to the studios they had taken that fateful day. Through the heavy door, down the steps. Simon’s bloody handprint has long since become invisible to human eyes.

Outside the morning show’s studio, nobody tries to stop them, the only assault coming from a frazzled intern wielding lavalier microphones.

The tranquility of the roof falls away as Markus ceases to observe the countless small lives of the people of Detroit from above, and lets his own life become one of them once more.

Their host is already live on air as they are rushed into the studio and positioned on a fashionable white couch to look suitably unthreatening for breakfast consumption.

“Good morning Detroit, good morning America, this is Channel 16, your Voice of the Revolution. Still broadcasting right from Stratford Tower, the place our world was forever changed. My name is Joss Douglas and today I’ll be joined by…”


End file.
